Paperbacks.

Plant Dreaming Sleep

A Private Mythology

The Poet and...

October 13, 1996|By Gioia Diliberto.

Plant Dreaming Sleep; A Private Mythology; The Poet and the Donkey, by May Sarton (Norton, $11 each).

Nature was May Sarton's chief muse, as these lyrical works by the New England poet, all first published in the 1960s, reveal. In "The Poet and the Donkey," a novella set in rural New Hampshire, Sarton explores the link between the creativity of an aging writer and the revitalizing power of a mischievous animal. "Plant Dreaming Sleep" delineates the world of a middle-age woman, during a harsh winter alone in her house, as she pores over seed catalogs and dreams "of the still nonexistent garden." "A Private Mythology" is a collection of poems inspired by Sarton's trip around the world to celebrate her 50th birthday. Landscapes of Japan, Greece and India are recalled vividly. At the end of the trip the poet (who died last year) returns to her village with a fresh regard for its terrors and its pleasures--from a fierce snowstorm to the small turtles that inhabit her property.

The Passion of Alice, by Stephanie Grant (Houghton Mifflin, $11.95).

"In Latin, suffering and passion come from the same root," observes Alice Forrester, the anorexic heroine of this tart first novel. The 25-year-old librarian regards her all-consuming addiction to food denial as a form of "self knowledge." It's also a kind of suicide. After an episode of heart failure, Alice enters the eating-disorder clinic of a suburban hospital. Among the compulsive eaters, starvers and vomiters she finds a soulmate--the voluptuous bulimic Maeve Sullivan. A strong bond develops between the two women, who share a grim routine of psychotherapy and medical exams. Soon they become lovers, and Alice learns there's more to passion than pain.

City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World, by Witold Rybczynski (Touchstone Books/Simon and Schuster, $12).

Why aren't American cities like Paris? Because Americans aren't French. So concludes architect Rybczynski in this brisk, fact-crammed exploration of how the American experience and character have shaped our cities. Drawing on his vast knowledge of architecture, design and politics, Rybczynski traces urban history from the early Colonial settlements to today's slums. The author of the best-selling "Home," he illuminates why some cities are great places to live and others are wastelands.

How Natives Think: About Captain Cook, for Example, by Marshall Sahlins (University of Chicago Press, $14.95).

In 1992, Sri Lankan writer Gananath Obeyesekere published a prize-winning study attacking Sahlins, a University of Chicago anthropologist, for perpetuating myths about Capt. Cook's death in Hawaii more than 200 years ago. Obeyesekere argued that Sahlins was blinded by Western prejudices when he wrote in several scholarly journals that Hawaiians regarded Cook as the reincarnation of a god--a judgement error that led to Cook's sacrificial death. Now, in this erudite volume, Sahlins has his revenge. Using meticulous research to support his assertions, the professor demolishes Obeyesekere's arguments, one by one.

The Wicked Pavilion, by Dawn Powell (Steerforth Press, $14).

The title location of "The Wicked Pavilion" (first published in 1954) is the Cafe Julien, the smoky hangout for a group of viciously humorous New Yorkers. Here we meet characters from Powell's other novels, including the dashing writer Andy Callingham, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Ernest Hemingway. Powell, who died in 1965, was a shrewd comic novelist with a devoted cult following. Still, she never achieved mainstream fame, perhaps because of her unconventional life. "She was that unthinkable monster," Gore Vidal once remarked, "a witty woman who felt no obligation to make a single, much less a final, down payment on Love or the Family."